Some great ideas from the Grassroots Education Movement

The Grassroots Education Movement is the group behind the film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" that defends public education and teachers, and work to defend public education.

There site has some great resources and links about public education and the education reform movement that is currently sweeping the nation. All teachers should visit the site and read the information.

Below is a quote from their web site detailing more about them (GEMNYC):

The Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC) educates, organizes, and mobilizes educators, parents, students and communities to defend public education. Too many current corporate and government policies seek to underfund, undermine and privatize our public school system. GEM advocates around issues dealing with the equality and quality of public educational services as well as the rights of teachers and school workers. These issues include the incessant push for charter schools, the attack on union rights, the focus on high-stakes standardized testing, school closures, and the failure to address the racism and inequality that exists within our schools. As the attacks on public education and teachers grow more vicious, the collective organization of those who directly face these attacks at the grassroots level becomes all the more essential, and in fact constitutes the most effective potential resistance. GEM advocates for a positive vision of education reform by building alliances with other activist groups and organizing and helping coordinate the struggle at the grassroots school and community level, with a focus on school-level organizing. 

Our vision of a fully funded, democratic, public education system that is accountable to the public it is intended to serve includes the following real reforms:
Reform #1: Smaller Class Sizes
Reform #2: Excellent Community Public Schools for ALL Children
Reform #3: More Teaching – Less Testing
Reform #4: Parent and Teacher Empowerment and Leadership
Reform #5: Equitable Funding for ALL Schools
Reform #6: Anti-Racist Education Policies
Reform #7: Culturally Relevant Curriculum
Real Reform #8: Expand Pre Kindergarten and Early Intervention Programs
Real Reform #9: Qualified and Experienced Educators and Educational Leaders
Real Reform #10: Democratic and Social Justice Unionism

I have to agree with their reforms listed above. Smaller class sizes, community based schools, less testing, more empowerment of teachers, equitable funding, and more intervention programs will definitely help our students learn and succeed better. 

What do you think?

My take on some issues in education right now

Education is at the forefront of the media, political battles, legislation and everywhere you turn. There are some major issues being discussed and some are valid, some not so much. Education is a very dynamic, individualized, NOT-one-size-fits-all issue that needs real support and change. Here is my take on the big issues:

1. Teacher attacks - stop attacking teachers! We are not the cause of everything bad in the world. We are not responsible for everything about a student. We work hard, long hours. We act as surrogate parents, psychologists, social workers, mentors, and teachers. Yes we get summers off...from our main job. Most of us teach summer school or have another summer job to make ends meet. We can NOT do it all. Educating our children is a TEAM effort, that needs the community, schools, and parents involved.

2. Standardized Testing - I have no problem with giving students benchmark, standardized test occasionally. However, to say that these tests will be used to evaluate (and decide pay and firing of teachers) is ridiculous. Standardized testing is one way to assess PART of a student's learning and abilities. It can be useful to find areas that need to be addressed. But it is not the be-all-end-all of student, or teacher, assessment.

3. "Education Reform" - what a mess this is. Corporations and Politicians thinking that they know more about education than educators. There is a motivation behind much of education reform that is all about money. More standardized testing, textbooks and curriculum lead to more money for many companies. More charter schools equal more money for the companies that run them. Bad evaluation methods of teachers, tying teacher evaluations to standardized testing, and attacking teachers work to push good teachers out, and get them replaced by new, temporary, lower paid teachers. If we want true education reform, we need to have educators working on the plans, not politicians and private corporations. Read more here.

4. Literacy - this is one of the main issue that affects our students' ability to learn. We have students entering school who have never been read to, or taught anything about reading and they are way behind. Poverty and family life contribute to this issue, with many students having parents who don't/can't read or don't speak English. We need to improve the reading skills of our students so that they can read textbooks, web sites, and other educational materials and learn from them.

5. Poverty - Poverty must be addressed to help our students, and schools, succeed. I wrote more about it here.

6. Student Learning - students need to learn certain skills and concepts. They will not learn these from more testing. They will not learn these from canned curriculum. They will learn them from experienced educators doing innovative, interactive projects and lessons in the classroom. These Skills are vital for students to be successful in the future. What politicians and businesses want to do will not teach these skills to students, they will just teach them to take tests, and hate education.

What do you think about all the issues affecting public education today?



Related:

Who's responsible for failing students/schools? Everyone!

Assessing Student Learning - do it like assessing someone in their job

Musings on education reform

Educational Issues in Connecticut - what a mess!

Why Teachers Like Us Support Unions

Some Common Education Myth's Debunked

Incompetent Teachers or Dysfunctional Systems? Fix the system to support the teachers.

Just the Facts Please! The facts about "education reform" from NEA Today

Infographic - consequences of teaching to the test

Business/Manufacturing ideas applied to education

 

Business and Manufacturing Practices in Education. It's not a new idea, but I'm not talking about treating students like a product. I'm talking about some business and manufacturing processes that can help with other aspects of education. I've written about this before, but covering different ideas.

United Technologies Corporation has a quality program called ACE (Achieving Competitive Excellence)© that I used when I worked at Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky Aircraft. Every employee is trained on ACE and expected to use it. They have been using it for decades and it does work. ACE is a "set of tools that helps the organization identify process improvement opportunities, solve problems and assist with decision making processes."

There are some great ideas in here that can be used for education. 

6S (sort, straighten, shine, standardize, sustain, safety) and add Spirt (to continuously improve)

This is a method to keep things organized.  A place for everything and everything in it's place. It means that things are labeled and signed and people know where to find things. This could help in education with keeping classrooms, offices, supplies, and paperwork organized, clean and clutter free, along with allowing others to find resources when needed. It is simple - everyday, employees make sure that they are keeping their area clean and organized and that every thing is labeled and put away at the end of the day.

TPM Total Productive Maintenance: safety/lockouts, equipment cleaning/inspection, scheduled walkarounds, preventative maintenance.

Too many times in education we are only fixing things when they break instead of maintaining them. This includes computers, office equipment and facilities. There should be scheduled maintenance of all of these things to prevent issues.

Process Cert/Mgmt: make processes effective, efficient, & agile - while being controllable & standard.
This is a way of evaluating processes and making them work better. This would include how things are done, such as running testing, handling problems, organizing the school day, school schedules, etc. Instead of just having things being done as they always have, this makes people evaluate how and why they do things the way they do and if it is the best way of doing things.

Standard Work: work is simplified & structured for max consistancy, repeatability, and quality
This is a great idea for repeating tasks, such as school startup, state testing, assemblies, office procedures, and more. The tasks are assessed and the best way of doing the task is written down in a procedure. We could use this for the start of school as each year things are missed and have to be done last minute. It's a great way to make sure that things are done the best way, every time.

QCPC: record turnbacks, investigate and eliminate reasons, RRCA: Relentless Root Cause Analysis and Mistake Proofing
I put these three together for education. QCPC is a way to track any problems, issues, errors, and the like so that they can be analyzed and the reason behind them found and fixed. RRCA is a way to look at a problem or mistake and keep digging to find the root cause of a problem. Mistake Proofing is a way of preventing the problem or issue from happening in the future.

An example would be that a student is failing a class. Why? He doesn't complete his work and doesn't come to school enough. Why? He has issues at home. Why? Because he is tired and sick often. Why? Because he works at a job all evening, 5 days a week. Why? Because his family needs the money. How do we fix it? Find a way to help the family so that the student does not have to work that many hours.

Market Feedback Analysis: improve product quality through use of data from customers, in-house.
This is something schools do in a way. They collect data on student performance and attendance. But what about getting actual feedback from the students on what they think about school, how things are going, what they are doing in school, how things could be improved? We should also be getting feedback from parents and the community.

(EH&S) Environment, Health and Safety - mistake proof, risk analysis, environmental impacts, safeguards
EH&S is about having a safe and healthy environment. Keeping things clean and in good repair, and helping to keep staff, faculty and students happy.

Six Sigma is another program, similar to ACE, that is used by many corporations in a similar way and it also has some great ideas that can be applied to education.

I think education can learn a lot from business practices, especially when it comes to quality improvement. All of these things can be used to improve things in schools, without treating anyone like a product.

Related:

Apply Business Practices to Education - great ideas that can help education

5 Tips for Success - in school, business and in life

ACE vs. Six Sigma report

ACE Overview
ACE Overview 2

Six Sigma in Education

Using Six Sigma to Solve Issues in Public School System

The VIVA Project - easy way for teachers to collaborate and add voice to education policy

The VIVA Project is a interesting project I just became aware of. It's mission statement is "The VIVA Project works to dramatically increase classroom teachers’ participation in important state and national policy decisions about public education. We open direct communication between individual teachers and public officials, giving public officials authentic insight into how public classrooms and schools work best and they make policy that works better for classrooms."

Vision
Classroom teachers from all corners of their state and our country will share their best ideas and collaborate to develop actionable policy initiatives that will directly shape decisions about public education for all American students and their teachers. Their work will result in education policy that puts classroom teaching and learning first.

The VIVA Project empowers teachers to give state and national elected officials the real story from the classroom.
By sharing their ideas with other classroom teachers, teachers find common ground, learn from different challenges and together make public education work.

• The VIVA Project gives teachers collective and connective power with other teachers
• The VIVA Project is a time saving, easy way to connect with other teachers
• The VIVA Project gives the most passionate teachers an opportunity to tap into a large network of teachers with the same interests and goals quickly

Teachers – you share your idea and see what other teachers think, you can see other teachers’ ideas and tell them what you think and you can work together to pick the best ideas for positive change, making change happen, without spending hours in meetings.

The VIVA Project is organized to spread nationally and the idea behind it is excellent: help teachers communicate and collaborate with each other and policy makers to ensure that educational policies are designed to improve teaching and learning and are focused on the students. Teachers are the education professionals and politicians and policy makers need to listen to our expertise. The VIVA Project helps make that happen.

One of the benefits of a project like this is that it allows teachers to collaborate and share their ideas on their schedule, and then push those ideas and solutions to the decision makers. Teachers don't need to spend all of their free time going to policy meetings and still not being heard.

The VIVA Project website: http://vivateachers.org/

The VIVA Project Twitter account: http://twitter.com/VIVAProject


Does anyone have any direct experience with the VIVA Project that they would like to share?

NCLB’s Impact on Science Education - NSTA Reports

NSTA, the National Science Teacher's Association, has a great report on the impact of NCLB on Science Education in the US.

The report has data and comments from educators. NCLB does not focus on science in the lower grades. As such, science takes a back seat in the lower grades. Many schools cut back on science education to make more room for reading, writing and math.

At the secondary level, science test prep causes many schools to cut back on labs and activities, instead focusing on test prep and content facts.

Science is important. It is a vital area for mankind. We need to make sure all students have a basic literacy in science to be informed consumers and citizens, and we need more students to go into science and engineering careers. Science and engineering solve the worlds problems. Standardized testing does not. We need to improve science education and make sure science is taught in every grade.

All science teachers, administrators, politicians, heck, everyone, need to read this report.
http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=59215


Related:

Experiments and Exploration are vital to science education!

3 Ways to Fix U.S. Science Education

STEM Resources for Educators and Students

10 Important Skills Students need for the Future

3 Ways to Fix U.S. Science Education

Popular Mechanics has an article about MythBuster Adam Savage's 3 Ways to Fix U.S. Science Education.

I agree with him that these 3 ways are needed in science education and can help students learn, and be more engaged. The 3 Ways are his, the explanations are mine. Read the article for his explanations.

"1. Let students get their hands dirty". Students have to explore in science with hands-on labs and activities. They can not truly learn science just from lectures, or videos. They have to experience it. Let them just explore things.

"2. Yes, spend more money on science." Students have to explore and experiment in science. They have to be hands on. To do that, they need equipment and supplies. We can't keep cutting budgets. 90% of what I have in my Physics classroom was funded by outside sources, such as Donors Choose. That's not the way it should be. Schools should be supplying the resources we need.

"3. Celebrate mistakes." I was an engineer for 10 years before becoming an educator. We rarely got a design "right" the first time. The design process takes lots of time and iterations. Same with science. So, we should let students make mistakes, learn from the mistakes, and then do it again.

Read more: MythBuster Adam Savage: 3 Ways to Fix U.S. Science Education - Popular Mechanics


Related:

Experiments and Exploration are vital to science education!

STEM Resources for Educators

Project Based Learning Resources for Educators

Making School Relevant for Students

(photo from victorisawesome.wordpress.com)

Today I overheard this comment by a student in one of my physics classes: "I like this class because I actually learn something real that I can use." I was very happy to hear this.

I try to relate what I'm teaching and what students are doing to something they know. This is something teachers are taught to do, but it's not always easy. In physics, I relate the concepts to daily activities. For example, today we were exploring the concept of torque. The students learned about extending the length of a tool (lever arm) to increase the torque. We talked about how this could help them when changing a tire or working with a nut and bolt. I work hard to find things like this that I can use to make the learning more relevant. I don't want a student to ask "Why do we have to learn this?" I want them to know right away how what they are learning is relevant to them. I don't come up with all of the ideas myself. I find a lot of ideas from textbooks (yes, you heard that right) and my personal learning network. I've found some great resources online over the last few years.

Relevance in the classroom has always been a major idea in education, but I'm seeing more and more discussions about this topic in the education area lately. Students know that there are certain skills and knowledge that they need for the future.

In addition to making the content relevant to them, I use project based learning to help them develop computer skills (presentations, online research, blogging, graphing and calculations with excel, publishing, etc.), communications skills, teamwork, problem solving, self learning, and critical thinking. These are the kinds of things they really need to know and be able to do in the future. (see this article "10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future".)

Another good way to make school more relevant is to let students have a choice on how to demonstrate their learning and use some creativity. Let them choose whether to write a paper, create a website, create a multimedia presentation or write a song to demonstrate their understanding. Let them be creative and have time to explore topics that they are interested in. Differentiating teaching and learning helps also.

Making school relevant to students is the best way to engage them and prepare them for the future. Show them how what they are learning is important to them now and in the future. Show them that the content they are learning can help them or serve them in some way and remind them of the other skills they are developing that will help them in life.

Related:

10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future

Project Based Learning

Science of Everyday Life

Create a Personal Learning Network

Should we force students to learn? or How can we change schools to engage students?

Differentiating with Web 2.0 Technologies



What do you think? How are you (or how can you) make school more relevant to your students?

Wondering - why is it that education is suddenly "Failing"?

I keep wondering about this. Supposedly, public education in America is "failing". I don't understand how. We have changed how we do things in our classrooms and have all these online resources. Students can access information and help resources from their phones. So why are we "failing?"

When I was in high school, we sat in a chair and took notes. We talked about books in English, studied historical events, did labs in science, and did tons of problems in math. We learned and we went off to college and did well. We had almost no support programs in the building.

Now, as teachers, we differentiate, do projects, have students doing online enrichment work, have social workers, psychologists, tutoring and mentoring programs. Yet, students are apparently failing.

We have "improved" education, yet we are "failing". I don't get it. We do all this "reform" yet nothing is changing.

Of course, it could have something to do with the method of evaluating education being a mostly invalid, standardized test where even students who don't speak English have to take it. It could have something to do with more and more students having less parenting at home due to single parents, absentee parents, or parents working multiple jobs. It could have something to do with students not getting read to and starting to read later in life. It could have to do with the test being completely useless. It could have to do with professional educators being left out of decisions and planning for educational issues.

It just boggles my mind how we have some many support systems, great teachers, incredible lessons and resources, and yet we are "failing."

Can anyone explain it?

WPI Plan - a great educational model for all schools

There has been a lot of talk about education reform and what models will help our students learn the best. I submit that Worcester Polytechnic Institute's undergraduate program plan is a great model to follow. It stresses learning, critical thinking, functional literacy in a topic, project based learning, and student creativity. 
College was a great experience for me and I learned much more than just content. In fact, I feel that my undergraduate degree at WPI prepared me for anything I want to do in the future. Let me explain.

I went to Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester, MA. WPI is an excellent school, highly ranked, and offers an excellent educational experience. The school is small, with only 3,400 undergraduate students. But, the school is well equipped and well run. 

The secret behind the school's success is the unique curriculum, called the WPI Plan, consisting of 4 quarters instead of 2 semesters, 3 large projects, and course curriculum that are mainly project based. Each undergraduate has to complete a Humanities Sufficiency Project, an Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) and a Major Qualifying Project (MQP). 

The Sufficiency is a 3 credit project and course sequence in the humanities which ensures that all WPI graduates are well rounded. Instead of students having to take meaningless core courses, they develop their own plan and sequence. I took a writing course to help improve my writing skills and then took a sequence of courses in US Government and Foreign Policy before doing my project on the political use of air power in the Vietnam war.

The IQP is a 9 credit project done in the junior year which relates science and technology to society. My group did a project on the Quality of Technical Education in the United States. As part of it, we did research on different programs, school systems, number of students taking technical majors (engineering, science, etc.) and then surveyed current engineers and scientists about their college education and what they thought was good and bad about it. We also looked at how well high school's were preparing students for these types of college majors and made recommendations for high school programs. (which started my interest in education).

The MQP is a 9 credit project done in the senior year similar to a Master's thesis. My group designed a Two-Stage-To-Orbit space craft. We had to do everything from project planning, to engineering design and analysis, to working with NASA (who sponsored the project) to get information and feedback. The project then had to be presented and defended in our department. 

The project based curriculum helps students learn content and develop problem solving, communications, and teamwork skills. It also helps develop ethics and responsibility in the students. I found that my WPI education has prepared me for my career as an engineer, as well as an educator, and served me well in many capacities.

This plan stresses project based learning. Why? Because back when they developed the Plan (over 30 years ago) they knew that the only way to truly master subject area content is to apply it. They also knew that students needed to develop teamwork, communication skills, problem solving skills, creativity, critical thinking, and research skills (sounds like "21st Century skills" doesn't it?). WPI's symbol is the two towers of the first two buildings on campus. Lehr und Kunst. German for Theory and Practice, it's WPI's founding motto and the principle that still underlies the academic programs today. In class, in projects, and in research, students and faculty put knowledge into action to make the world better.

The projects are an integral part of the Plan. All classes are expected to use projects in their curriculum and the school has the three projects that all students must complete. The classes are taught by professors who are very dedicated to education, not just research. Each class is project based and emphasizes critical thinking and problem solving, along with a functional literacy of the topic, over memorizing data and facts.

I think that WPI was ahead of the game with their plan, considering this is the route that high schools and even middle schools are going. K-12 education is starting to realize how important these skills are and that project based learning is a great way to engage students while teaching them content and other needed skills.

I think that we can make more schools like WPI and do a better job of teaching our students the skills they need to know: teamwork, communications, problem solving, critical thinking, self-education and lifelong learning.

The students at WPI are given more control over their education by having the freedom to choose what they want to learn and how they are going to learn it. There are not a huge number of unneeded and useless "core" classes for students to take. Students create their own humanities program and their own educational plan. There is space in their schedule for them to take elective classes to explore new areas and topics. Students learn the basics and develop a fundamental literacy in each subject. Students do not memorize formulas and facts. They learn how to apply their knowledge to real-world problems and situations. For example, in Thermodynamics, we were taught the three laws of thermodynamics in depth. Then we were able to apply these to any situation instead of learning 10-15 different equations for different situations. This is in contrast to many schools who teach students every little equation for specific situations instead of teaching them the basics and how to apply the basics to any situation.

All of the learning, research and projects all have a purpose beyond just for class. Projects are all real-world applications or really are real-world projects. Student projects have included working to shore up the canals of Venice, design water systems for villages in Africa, developing medical equipment for disabled or sick patients, designing safety features for cars, and much more. This learning with a purpose gives meaning to what everyone is doing. This is very important in education.

WPI stresses teaching over research also and is very committed to the quality of the professors. Professors who have issues with their teaching or have poor reviews by students (each class has a evaluation form done by every student and these are taken very seriously) are given support and help in changing and improving their teaching. They are not vilified. They are supported and helped and that means that they become better educators. This is what we need to do with K-12 educators - help them when they struggle, not demonize them as the reason for the failure of society.

The WPI Plan is an excellent model for schools to use as a way to make education more personalized, engaging, relevant, and effective in preparing students for the future. The education there goes beyond preparing them just for the major they are in. The education prepares students for life. They are prepared to continue their education, adapt to new situations, and even change careers from engineering to education. It is truly a unique and effective way to teach and learn.

Related Posts:
http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2010/04/great-educational-ideas-from-colleges.html
http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/12/technology-in-use-in-engineering.html
http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2009/04/project-based-learning.html
http://www.wpi.edu/News/Journal/Oct96/miracle2.html